Visual Cognition Attention Deficit Disorder

Visual Cognition

Attention Deficit Disorder and Driving While Multi-tasking

According to Marlene Snyder's book, ADHD & Driving: A Guide for Parents of Teens with AD/HD, teenagers with attention deficit disorder are in more accidents and receive more moving traffic violations than unaffected teens. Considering that the symptoms of AD/HD are relatively consistent from the late teens up into the early to mid- adult years, one would assume that adults experience the same sort of disparity. (Research on adult AD/HD lags well behind that dealing with children and teens) Obviously, having the ability to pay attention to the road is very important to good driving. Yet AD/HD is not the only thing that can distract from the road. According to AAA's traveling companion, the top causes of accidents and poor driving (other than alcohol) are generally related to distractibility and lack of attention. (Goepal, 2003) Eating or listening to the radio are mentioned as examples of activities that may distract from driving, and of course a great deal of attention has been paid recently to cellphone usage while driving. If minor activities while driving can distract even the non-affected driver, it is possible they have a more severe affect on AD/HD drivers. However, some individuals with AD/HD have also been known to use multitasking as a kind of therapeutical activity in order to allow them to concentrate more fully on the work actually at hand. (Living with ADD, 2004) AD/HD appears to sometimes function in such a way that the mind affected is not sufficiently interested in a single topic, and when trying to concentrate on a single thing it will quickly skip off to something else. Some people cope with AD/HD by selective use of minor distractions, such as listening to music or chewing gum (or other oral/physical experiences like smoking cigarettes, eating, playing with a tongue ring, etc.); they report that having a consistent but manageable distraction helps them keep their mind sufficiently entertained that they can focus on the primary task at hand without being continually distracted by their own thoughts or other outside occurrences.

The question, then, is whether or not individuals with AD/HD who engage in "distracting" activities such as listening to the radio, eating, or talking while driving will be more or less likely to drive unsafely than are individuals with AD/HD who do not engage in such activities while driving. As part of this question, the performance of AD/HD drivers while multi-tasking and single-tasking should be compared to the performance of unaffected drivers in both categories, to determine if the difference between multi-tasking and single-tasking drivers is affected by the AD/HD status of those drivers or is a constant.

The most generic hypothesis which would be addressed by this study would be that having AD/HD does have a unique affect on the ability of drivers to safely multi-task, whether for better or worse. A more specific hypothesis might be that those with AD/HD are especially likely to perform better when performing small secondary tasks than when trying to concentrate only on their driving, because if they do not allow minor distractions they will become more seriously distracted from their primary tasks -- moreover, this hypothesis would suggest this distraction was not likewise beneficial for those who did not have ADHD. However, this could be entirely wrong. An alternate hypothesis would suggest that because their attention is already so fragmented, AD/HD drivers attempting to multi-task are more at risk of driving poorly than are other multi-tasking drivers or AD/HD drivers who are not multi-tasking

Method: Subjects

There are four sets of subjects, each of which should as closely resemble one another as is possible. All should have valid driving licenses and have owned and driven their own car for at least a year. This will assure both that they are safe to drive and that they are comfortable in the car which they will drive. The very process of having to drive a strange car could skew the results between AD/HD and non-AD/HD subjects, so it is important to remove this and any other unnecessary environmental changes.

There should be about forty undergraduate subjects, divided into four equal groups with balanced percentages of male and female participants. The more closely these four groups compare to one another, the more accurate the results will be. Efforts should be made to keep the racial balance the same in all groups, and any other concessions that might be made to make the four group homogenous (apart from ADHD status) should be made. Two of these groups should be comprised of students who have AD/HD and have either been referred from school counselors or have a history of diagnoses. The other two should be students who do not have any history of AD/HD. All participants in all groups should be given a very basic screening test for AD/HD and other major psychological disorders, to help assure that the diagnosis (or lack thereof) is appropriate and that no other significant contributing factors such as epilepsy, schizophrenia, or other attention disorder exist.

Method: Procedure

Drivers in each group will be asked to take an observer driving with them on three different occasions at specified times and on specified routes. These drives should occur during specific times when different traffic patterns, lighting conditions, and daily stress patterns will be occurring, and should be performed over the same time period and along the same route for each driver. A morning, afternoon, and evening ride would be ideal. Both highway and city driving should be included in the route. Ten of the drivers with AD/HD and ten without should be asked not to engage in any activity in the car which might count as a distraction, including such minute activities as chewing gum, smoking, or listening to the radio. These should be groups a (with AD/HD) and B (without AD/HD). The other twenty will be encouraged to engage in distracting activity, including eating or drinking (nonalcoholic drinks), engaging in conversation, or listening to music. These should be groups C (with AD/HD) and D (without), respectively. Discretion over their activity should be allowed, and if any individual particularly does not want to engage in such activity they should be allowed to switch places with someone in the no-activity categories who does not object. (Forced distractions are a different area of research from chosen distractions)

The observer's role is to carefully observe and record what activities take place in the car, or to monitor the lack of activity which has been ordained. Additionally, the observer should observe and record any illegal or seriously unsafe driving practices such as closely cutting off other drivers, failing to yield, failing to signal and also failing to check carefully when merging, unreasonable speeding, and any accidents or near accidents or traffic citations which occur. Precise records should be kept so that the sort of behaviors engaged in can be analyzed to determine both severity and frequency of occurrences.

After all the driving experiences have been finished, the observer's records should be coded by the researcher, preferably without reference to the driver's AD/HD status. Unsafe driving acts should be uniformly coded between one and ten in severity, with one being a minor violation (such as coming to an overly abrupt stop at lights), one through 7 being progressively more serious violations (such as running red lights, missing stop signs, or cutting off other drivers), eight being reserved for violations or poor choices leading to near-accidents and for traffic citations, and nine representing actual accidents. Death or serious injury to any party should be considered a ten. Each driver should then receive an overall score composed by adding all these individual incident scores. Once final scores have been received, the groups can be compared in terms of which drivers performed most safely. An average score should be computed for each group, unless said average misrepresents the total configuration of scores (e.g., if everyone in a group was remarkably safe except one fellow who was a maniacal driver and nearly got himself killed multiple times), in which case a mean score or adjusted average may be more appropriate.

Results and Discussions wide range of results could emerge from such a test. First, it is possible that all drivers who multi-task drive less safely than those who do not, and that there is either no difference in AD/HD and other drivers in this respect, or that the difference is merely one of degree (e.g. that AD/HD drivers are only slightly less or slightly more safe). However, it is alternately possible that one or the other, or both, sort(s) of driver is actually safer when selectively distracted, because the minor distraction prevents their minds from wandering. AD/HD could prove to provide an advantage when trying to drive with minor chosen distractions and a disadvantage when driving normally, or alternately it could provide a disadvantage in all situations (or perhaps even none).

If the general hypothesis held true, and "AD/HD does have a unique affect on the ability of drivers to safely multi-task, whether for better or worse," then one would expect to see that the average score for group C. was significantly higher or lower than would be predicted. A baseline prediction could be taken by comparing the scores of groups a and B, and then comparing the scores of group B. And D. If AD/HD had no unique effect on multi-tasking, then one would expect the same ratio to exist between multi-tasking groups as between single-tasking groups. For example, imagine that group a averaged a "danger score" of ten, and the average group B. driver score was five. Further imagine that the average group D score was seven. One would then expect that group C. would be double that and have a score of fourteen. If their actual score was either significantly lower or higher than that, this might indicate that AD/HD had a specific effect not just on the ability of the individual to drive in all conditions but also specifically on their ability to drive while multitasking. If the score was lower than fourteen, it might indicate that controlled distractions were not as damaging to AD/HD drivers as to others. If it was lower than ten (e.g., lower than the score of the single-tasking AD/HD drivers) then this would indicate that such distractions were actually beneficial. If the score were higher than fourteen, on the other hand, it might indicate that multitasking was even more dangerous for AD/HD individuals than for others. A similar dynamic would exist even if the average multitasking score for all drivers was more comparable (or even lower) than the average single-tasking scores.